


The Wanderers

by GingerBreton



Series: Then I Met You [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Banter, F/M, Getting to Know Each Other, My First Work in This Fandom, Pre-Relationship, i'll just be here working out my character dynamics please bear with me, now i can't get 'the wanderer' out of my head, travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24276214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerBreton/pseuds/GingerBreton
Summary: MacCready and Ivy head back towards Sanctuary Hills for the first time since she left for Diamond City.  After a disappointing morning on the road, MacCready reflects on getting used to his new boss, and learns maybe it's best not to bet against her.
Relationships: Robert Joseph MacCready/Female Sole Survivor
Series: Then I Met You [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813063
Comments: 22
Kudos: 49





	The Wanderers

The road out from Cambridge felt like it dragged on forever through the quiet backwaters of the commonwealth that MacCready had never really bothered with - never enough caps out here to make it worth the trip. That morning the sun had shone and he’d thought it might be nice to wander out into what the ‘wealth thought of as wasteland, but he’d not counted on how damn hot it’d be slogging uphill for hours on end. Weren’t winters meant to be colder the further north you went? It was November and his hat was sticking unpleasantly to his forehead. He was bored, irritable and parched, and for once he wasn’t complaining at the boss’s habit of carrying too much water. 

Ivy had been out of sorts all morning, barely noticing even his worst jokes, the ones that would usually send her into fits of giggles before she admonished him for making her laugh at something so bad. 

A last minute stop at Valentine’s Detective Agency had left her deflated. It’d only been a week since they’d rescued the detective, hardly enough time for him to dig up any leads on the mystery man from her vault. But there they were at the crack of dawn, MacCready still bleary-eyed and yawning into his sleeve when Valentine had opened the door with a sorry shake of his head at the sight of them. He had nothing more to offer them than coffee and an apology that nothing had turned up yet. 

Mac held his tongue for the boss’s sake - no point in throwing any more spanners in the works - and the detective at least seemed decent enough. For a synth. From what he could tell, finding Valentine was supposed to be some kind of big break for Ivy, but they were headed back with nothing to show for it and it was weighing on her. 

By the time they hit the shadow of the old Corvega factory he’d stopped bothering to try and make conversation. They settled into a heavy silence. Even the local wildlife seemed to have taken the hint, with not even the buzzing of a bloodbug breaking the wasteland stillness, only the sound of their laboured breathing as they continued to climb. 

Usually travelling with her was fun, something MacCready wasn’t used in the merc business - bosses tended to want you to shut the hell up and get the job done - but not her. Everything was new to Ivy, and he had to admit to being entertained seeing his world through her. She always left herself an open book, every emotion easy to read in big brown eyes. 

One thing he could never guess was how she was going to handle one day to the next; some days she stuck so close to his side that they might as well be glued at the hip, all skittish like a radstag doe at the slightest sound. 

But then there were days like the Library, when she got the giggles from the damn greenskins trying to tempt them out of hiding.  _ “But Mac, they said it was a treat..” “No.” “Aren’t you even curious?” “No!” “Ugh, knowing my luck it’s probably an overdue book fine from 2076.” _ And after all hell broke loose, she even managed to find a working camera in the wreckage and went limping over to one of the remaining protectrons - already sniggering - to try and persuade it to take a picture of them. Like some kind of pre-war tourist. It was her calling it ‘officer’ that broke him, left him doubled up with tears streaming down his cheeks. 

That camera was still somewhere in her pack, and waiting to be developed were some sure to be dreadful pictures of him blinding them with the flash. It had been a good day.

But now she wandered ahead, blank and unreadable, leaving him stuck with no conversation, nothing to shoot at, and no idea whether it was going to get better or worse by the time they got to the settlement. 

“There’s a trader up ahead.” MacCready started, trying his best to make it look like he’d been scanning the horizon for danger - and wondering how long he’d been wandering without actually looking. “I thought I might just nip in and see if she has anything they might need at Sanctuary, if that’s alright with you?”

So this is why she picks up so much crap.

“Fine by me, boss. Just don’t make me carry it all.” He glanced past her to the brow of the hill where a large sign declared the Drumlin Diner was ‘open 24/7’.

If you ignored the broken windows and the occasional two hundred year old former patron - who’d thought that a milkshake was the best way to see in the apocalypse - the diner was in surprisingly decent shape. 

They paused for a moment in the parking lot while Ivy struggled to get into her pack without dropping her rifle. He took pity on her, taking the rifle out of her hands with a sigh and propping it against the outer wall of the diner. This close she looked exhausted, and now he thought about it, she hadn’t eaten since the night before. 

MacCready couldn’t imagine not eating when there was food on offer, but then again Lucy used to joke that he could eat a whole brahmin and still be hungry - that’s what sixteen years of cave fungus does to you. 

With a grateful smile and a quiet ‘thank you’, her rifle now safely stowed on her shoulder, Ivy headed through the door ahead of him. The sweet smile that had been missing all morning had been mustered ready to coax a bargain out of the unsuspecting recipient - the same smile that’d somehow knocked fifty caps off his fee a couple of weeks before. 

A stern woman leant possessively on the diner counter, in a way that inevitably meant she had a shotgun tucked just out of sight. She opened her mouth to greet Ivy but caught sight of MacCready in the doorway. Turning an icy glare on him, she regarded him with about as much pleasure as she might a junkyard mutt that had just rolled in molerat crap. 

The smile slipped from Ivy’s lips, completely at a loss as to what had caused the unexplained hostility. She hadn’t been around MacCready long enough to witness how often wastelanders just thought of mercenaries as well-paid raiders. Although depending on what kind of work they took, they weren’t entirely wrong - his time with the Gunners had shown him that much. 

After the hot miserable morning he’d had, Mac could easily have just snapped, told the old biddy exactly where she could stick her supplies - oh man, did he want to - but for the second time that day, he kept his opinions to himself and slunk back outside, grumbling under his breath and lighting a cigarette as he went. 

* * *

After a good five minutes stalking around the parking lot, he finally perched himself on a stool, nodding to the skeleton who occupied the counter seat next to him. Taking a final drag, he snuffed out the cigarette on the countertop, smirking at the way it sank through the varnish, leaving a blackened ring and the stink of burnt plastic. 

He’d been trying to cut back on the smoking, another promise he’d made months before, albeit a harder one to keep than watching his language. MacCready hated waiting around for no reason - but so was the life of a sniper - so he needed something to keep his hands or at least his mind occupied, and the nicotine took the edge off his restlessness. 

Leaning back on the counter he caught snippets of the conversation he’d been so rudely excluded from. It sounded like Ivy must have helped out with something the last time she was here and, judging by the time he’d spent in her company, it had everything to do with the blood splattered on the tarmac near to where he was sat.

He let his eyes drift up and down the road, watching for any sign of trouble - actually paying attention this time - but it was as quiet as he expected. This was possibly  _ the _ most uneventful day he’d had since leaving his homestead, and while he knew he should be grateful for the peace, he had to admit he was bored. 

A playful elbow to the ribs jolted free of his haphazard guard duty - Ivy was back, her pack looking a little heavier than before. 

“You ok?” she asked, taking in what must have been his utterly zoned out expression while she pressed an  _ almost  _ cold Nuka-Cola into his hand. She gave his hand the slightest squeeze before letting go of the bottle and  _ finally _ he could see a real smile starting to tug at the corners of her mouth.

“Yeah,” MacCready nodded, flashing her a smirk before taking a long swig of the Nuka-Cola. He couldn’t deny he was grateful the silence was over, and that at least something seemed to have brightened the boss’s mood. Although he couldn’t for the life of him think what that woman could have done to cheer her up. 

“Good.” Ivy’s smile broke into a grin, her eyes flashing mischievously as she turned up the radio on her pip-boy. “Because you are  _ not _ going to believe this.” 

“What?”

“Just wait,” she teased, tearing into a packet of gumdrops and offering him one before sitting back to watch him as he puzzled over what she was up to. 

The last few bars of ‘Orange Coloured Sky’ blared tinnily from the tiny speakers - great, that was going to be stuck in his head for the rest of the day.

“What did you have to go getting that--” 

_ “Truly one of the greatest voices ever, that was Nat King Cole..” _

“Who the heck is that?” 

_ “Travis ‘Lonely’ Miles here, bringing you...” _

“You’ve got to be shi-- kidding me! Vadim was right?” 

MacCready stared incredulously at the pipboy where the newly ‘smooth’ tones of Travis Miles drifted from. Begrudgingly he shifted his gaze up to Ivy, and the smirk spreading its way across her face. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she’d stolen Christmas. “You’re pretty pleased with yourself right now, aren’t you?”

Ivy held out a hand, wiggling her fingers expectantly, her smile bordering dangerously on coy. 

“That’ll be twenty caps, please.”

* * *

Ivy led the way up the hill again, but this time instead of silence, the radio was turned up as high as it would go. It was like a switch had been flipped and all of that melancholy had been channeled into an obnoxiously good mood. MacCready wasn’t sure how many more caps he’d be willing to lose if poorly judged bets were what it took to cheer her up, but at least she was back to actually laughing at his jokes again, even the really bad ones. 

Especially the really bad ones. 

She’d been humming along with the radio as they walked, and he chattered, but as soon as Travis introduced ‘The Wanderer’, Mac knew exactly what was coming. It wasn’t the first time that song had wormed its way into her head, she’d even sing along in the middle of Diamond City -albeit quietly- but in her current mood... 

Ivy sang at the top of her lungs, the slight skip in her step falling in line with the drum beat. It didn’t take long for her hips to start to sway, and by the time the saxophone kicked in she was just dancing like an idiot up the middle of the road. Occasionally she’d twirl around dramatically to serenade him directly - between fits of laughter of course. Even out of pocket, he couldn’t resist laughing and singing along in the face of that onslaught. 

“Are you planning on looking out for  _ any _ trouble, angel, or is that my job now?” MacCready called after her, shaking his head at the ridiculous display, and doing his best to keep the grin off his face when she looked back at him.

“If I remember rightly... and I usually do,” she quirked an eyebrow at him. “You never actually asked what the job was. Congratulations, you got paid two hundred caps to be my audience.”

She was dead right on that one. He’d been so desperate for work he’d not even thought to ask. He probably wouldn’t even know her name if she hadn’t awkwardly held out her hand and introduced herself after their deal was struck. 

He’d got lucky with this one. It wasn’t often you accidentally stumbled into a decent job without asking any questions - and there were far worse shows in the Commonwealth to be an audience to. 

He rolled his eyes at her. “Ugh, in that case don’t get too far ahead of me, or I’ll not be able to shoot everyone who doesn’t appreciate your talent as much as  _ you _ do.” 

He got a gumdrop launched at his head for that one. 

**Author's Note:**

> New fandom who dis??
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. This is my first attempt at anything fallout, and the first time i've written anything in nearly nine months - my brain has been bad and this has been hard work. Please be gentle.
> 
> This was my first go at writing these two, so it was a little bit of a fun exercise for me in getting used to them and their dynamic. I have some fluff prompts in the works which should be a bit less random. 
> 
> And if you happen to be interested in seeing any art or screenshots of these two, my tumblr fallout sideblog is @third-rail-vip 
> 
> Thanks again


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